


Tomorrow

by vapourtoastie



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Character Death, THIS HURT ME TO WRITE IM SO SORRY, broken heart emoji broken heart emoji, i read over this like one time, the five great knights are cool
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27235912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vapourtoastie/pseuds/vapourtoastie
Summary: The Spire is isolated, but interweaved with the City's fate.The Spire is an extension of the Watcher, isolated and interweaved moreso.There is no other way. No cost too great.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 38





	Tomorrow

Fleeting and permanent, the rainfall greeted him as he awoke. The Watcher observed his compliment with sluggish awe, the sublime creeping in like the ache in his back. A sense of finality settled in.

The eyepiece of his cherished telescope rested above his lap, awaiting him like the thunder of a storm, equally patient. He adjusted the angle, and his own posture in time to the pitter-patter outside, ready and electric with the atmosphere.

Eclectic and arrhythmic, the City rose from the lens. Magnified and gorgeous, the City awoke with the lumaflies. Cold yet feeling, the City was drenched in its legacy. Oh, how it astounded him with every waking and sleeping moment.  Droplets danced precariously along rooftops, the anticipation of freedom that he was privy to witness. Petrichor cloyed to his cloak and as the Watcher took a breath, grounding himself in the moment, the scent seeped in, and stayed. A constant he lived for, and would never live without.

Knock. Knock knock. Knock.

The pattern.

Regular, scheduled. Contained like stars in the outside, but more familiar.

“Come in,” he spoke, swivelling reluctantly away from his passion. The expected stature appeared through the gap, his butler’s warm shaped mask angled to face him. The Watcher smiled under his own.

His butler entered, carrying a blanket. As Lurien stretched his arms from under his cloak, the rain-chilled air shook his chitin. He quickly plucked the offering and wrapped himself with it up to his uppermost set of arms. The stool felt like a hearth in that moment, and the Watcher melted into its embrace, infinitely grateful for his most valued servant’s foresight.

With a soundless step, the butler reached his hand to the Watcher’s mask, gently correcting its crooked position. He stepped back, “Master, you must remember to return to your chambers once your duties are completed for the day,” he scolded, an easy grin to the crescent of his eyes.

The Watcher almost argued his butler’s duty to remind him, but bit his tongue. He had asked for privacy in his evening Watchhours. It was indeed his own duty- though it would be amended soon.

With an air of acceptance, he turned back to his telescope, the extension of his being. The butler approached his side, and he rose. They walked in tandem to the window gap, forms sturdy like the gentle airflow. In the City, the intricate architecture gleamed with Pale influence, ever the reminder of their King; a figure the Watcher had come to admire greatly whence he learnt of his deeds for his beloved metropolis. This prompted a memory.

“I had a dream last night,” the Watcher began, glancing at his butler for a moment, before continuing without haste, “It was rather wishful,”

The butler paused, but as experience dictated, he swiftly found footing in the misty beginnings of conversation. “Are dreams not usually of such description?” he prodded.

Keeping his eye on the metalworks of the gates, the swirls and sectioning of the designs, Lurien hesitated, but responded, “I suppose you are correct. However, the timing of this particular one does not evade me,”

He could feel the eyes of his faithful servant bearing into his mask, searching. Lurien did not glance back, though he clung the blanket closer to his body. 

The sound of the rain rang throughout the room, accompanying him always. Never failing to envelop his senses, never leaving him in the silence, never depending. Hallownest continued beyond the Watcher’s Spire, and so it would for generations to come. He would ensure it.

“Master Lurien, do you recall the occasion when the Five Great Knights paraded the City?”

Lurien gave his butler a look, disbelief mirrored in his reflection, doubled and nearly equating the suspicion that came to the forefront of his heart. His butler stared back.

Calling forth his memories of the day, Lurien felt the excitement of the event rejuvenate his exoskeleton. Young and old prepared the parabola system, hanging chains of lumafly lamps along the route. For that one day, Lurien focused not on the rain’s path, but the path of the Great Knights as they appeared in all the expected fanfare, cheering and greeting and celebrating. That was the one time the Watcher felt longing to leave his Spire, observing the jovialities and merriment from his distance.

However, to his credit, he had not expected the Watcher Knights’ barracks to be used as an impromptu housing for the Great Knights, though when his butler pointed out the letter from Dryya that sat neatly on his untouched desk, Lurien felt some dismay. Truly, he did attempt to introduce his presence to the group, but the laughter that bounded from the walls intimidated him. He reached the entryway, but… No, there was another reason. What-

“Then you also recall the, ehm, White Defender’s defining characteristic?” the butler prompted, holding back a chuckle.

“‘Defining characteristic’? My dearest companion, you are surely forcing your niceties. That stench clung to the air, the armour, the Watcher Knights themselves, for weeks!” Lurien bit back, at last fitting the eye to the storm. 

After the outburst, they both could no longer keep an atmosphere of calm, looking to each other and laughing. The pit-pat of the rain on the roof hid their noise, the Spire seeming as gloomy and ethereal as it was before the Watcher awoke.

Even if the tension had been thick as the fog, as he consistently proved, Lurien’s butler cleared the melancholia. Lurien felt the gratefulness overwhelm him for a heartbeat. He would miss this.

As though to interrupt his thoughts yet again, “Then you would know, as that ‘defining characteristic’ haunted your nightly sleep,” he began, “The rain will accompany you to your Sleep,” the butler stated, leaning down to pick up the blanket from where the Watcher dropped it, “And as will I.”

Lurien felt the weight of the Blue Lake crash upon his shoulders. His joints felt weak, and he fell to his knees. Bated breath.

The blanket was wrapped around his back, and his butler sat in front of him. His loyal butler did not temporize as he slid his hands to his own face, delicately removing his mask, his last defence. The bug behind the wall looked up to him, “Master, I will watch over you,” he promised.

The promised clenched his hands into fists, in wonder and despair. Lurien felt the door to his observatory in his periphery, the last door he would enter. The weather outside worsened, as though the Lake held onto itself for him, as if the world was stopped until he effectively was dead. He would die. This was his last day.

A hand rested on his mask once more, not demanding, not controlling, not commanding but comforting. The City waited outside for his death, and he encouraged it, but as he sat with his butler on the freezing observatory tiles, Lurien felt a tinge of regret.

This was for the best.

“Thank you,” said the Watcher and the rain.

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO
> 
> I CRIED WHILE WRITING THIS
> 
> THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE POINTLESS BUT THEN SUDDENLY THERE WAS A PLOT
> 
> IM SO SORRY


End file.
